


Mistlefoe™

by wellthatswhatithought



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Christmas Party, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Rated for swearing, background zimbits, canon-typical alcohol use, idiot hockey players fighting under the mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 03:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellthatswhatithought/pseuds/wellthatswhatithought
Summary: “No no no, mistlefoe. It’s like mistletoe, except when you’re under it, instead of kissing, you have to fight.”Hockey players are idiots, with dumb ideas like fighting at holiday parties, but they're idiots who love each other.





	Mistlefoe™

**Author's Note:**

> Based on that tumblr post (by edens-blog)  
> Thanks @ Emily for immediately responding when I sent her the post and said "what if SMH did this" and then encouraging me to just write the heckin thing  
> \-----  
> Not only is this the first fic I've written, this is the first narrative piece I've written since like...middle school. So like a good seven years. 
> 
> Anyway, happy holidays, hope you didn't have to fight anyone in a doorway (unless you wanted to)!

“Ah, fuck.”

There was a loud crash from the direction of the living room, followed by a surprisingly long ripping sound, and a string of creative swears. Dex looked up from where he was rolling triangles of pastry dough around blackberry filling. (Dex thought it looked like jam, but Tango once referred to it as jam and Bitty nearly took off his head, so Dex had taken to calling it “filling,” even in his head.)

“Jack, you Canadian Adonis, you absolute specimen, you joy, the very light of my glorious life…please help.”

Jack sighed at Shitty’s voice, but turned and walked into the living room. “Shits, what the fuck?” While Shitty protested, Bitty and Dex followed Jack into the living room, where both Shitty and Nursey were sprawled on the floor, Shitty lying across Nursey’s back, his entire lower body stuck in the legs of a chair. Both boys were tangled in what appeared to be part of a bright red bedsheet.

“Goodness.” The corner of Bitty’s mouth twitched.

“What did you even do, Nurse?”

“You wound me, Poindexter! How do you know this wasn’t entirely Shitty’s fault, and I just caught in the crossfire?”

“Well, first of all, I’ve met you.”

Nursey glared, but before he could retort, Shitty stuck his hand out of the twisted sheet and said, “I just wanted to hang this.”

Dex squinted at the crumpled green object in Shitty’s hand. “Uh. What, uh, what is that?”

“The mistlefoe, brah, duh!”

Bitty’s eyes narrowed. “Uh, do you mean mistletoe? Did you hit your head, sweetie?”

“No no no, mistlefoe. It’s like mistletoe, except when you’re under it, instead of kissing, you have to fight.”

At that, Jack rolled his eyes, grabbed the chair, shook Shitty’s legs loose, and walked back to the kitchen. Bitty gave the whole situation a once-over, and said, “I don’t even want to know. Just be careful; we don’t need any broken bones for Christmas!” He shook his head as he returned to his seven concurrent baking projects, and Dex was left standing alone above Shitty and Nurse, now sitting up as they untangled themselves.

“So, uh, how did hanging one single object from the ceiling turn into…this?” Dex looked from Shitty to Nursey and back again.

Nursey grimaced sheepishly. “I was trying to hang this sheet on the other side of the doorway, like a cool dramatic curtain thing, cause I thought it would make a ‘swawesome entrance to the party room, and I thought I could just use Shitty’s chair for a sec to give me a boost, but then I dropped the corner of the sheet and my hand slipped and then this happened.”

“That doesn’t explain how you mummified yourself and also Shitty in the time it took you to fall.”

“Brah’s got mad skills, my dude.” Shitty laughed. “No harm no foul, though, brah. We should figure out what to do with this sheet though. Like a third of it ripped.”

Nursey looked at the sheet in distress. Dex snorted. “Don’t do anything else stupid. I don’t have time to fix more than one piece of furniture before tonight. And you gotta be in one piece so I can really fight you later.” Dex looked at Nursey, waiting for a retort, but it didn’t come. Nurse just glanced at him and then glanced away. He looked almost…disappointed? The pause left Dex feeling wrong-footed, so, assuming the conversation was over, he turned around and headed back to the kitchen, because pastry filling waits for no man.

***

By 9:30, the Haus had started to fill with festively adorned students. Bitty, finally satisfied with the goodies cramming every inch of horizontal space in the kitchen, waved Dex out with a punch bowl of eggnog and an order to “Enjoy yourself, no sense in stayin’ in this stuffy kitchen when there’s hardly nothin’ left to do in here!”

Dex set the eggnog on the designated drinks table and settled against the wall to watch the goings-on. There were more people than he’d expected so early, and many seemed a little more intoxicated than the hour would suggest. Dex figured the last big blowout of the semester probably merited pretty heavy pregaming. The red sheet had miraculously been hung after all, draped artfully around the doorway, the destroyed edge now lined with gold sequins. Dex suspected Lardo’s input. String lights of various colors and shapes outlined the walls and crisscrossed the entire ceiling. In the middle of a strand of icicle-shaped lights across the top of the doorway, a ball of green tissue paper, pine needles, what looked like stick tape, and a single sprig of mistletoe hung just above Dex’s head height. Dex chuckled. Despite the disasters of letting the team decorate, it actually looked pretty good. Or at least festive.

An elbow jammed into his side, and Dex turned his head to see Nursey leaning up against the wall next to him. “Here, Lards and I found this cool Christmas-themed beer. It’s not actually craft though, so don’t worry your little frat boy-shit taste-head about it.” Dex stuck his tongue out, but took the beer, nodding his thanks. The bottle had poinsettias on it, and he was a little surprised when the beer was actually pretty good. Despite Nursey’s chirp, Dex did appreciate good beer. “There’s another pack up in Lardo’s room, but be lowkey about it; there’s not really enough to share with anyone else.” Dex nodded.

“Room ended up looking pretty decent.”

Nurse’s eyes widened for a split second, and then his face settled into his usual smirk. “Thanks, Dexy. I always knew you had it in you to appreciate true taste.”

Dex snorted. “I don’t know if a mauled bedsheet counts as true taste, but at least it hides that hole where you slammed into the wall that one time.”

Nursey’s protestations were interrupted when Chowder appeared, wrapping his arms around both of their necks. “Guys!! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Christmas isn’t for another week and a half though, so really just happy December I guess!!” Farmer chuckled as she walked up behind him. The two were wearing matching ridiculous patchwork San Jose Sharks ugly Christmas sweaters, and Caitlin had teal and orange ribbon rosettes on her earrings. “Dex, you helped with these not-jam not-croissant things, right?? They’re so good!! Have you tried them yet?”

“Glad you like them, C. Haven’t tried them yet, guess I should go grab some before they’re all gone.” Dex pushed himself off the wall and looked at Nursey. “Want anything?”

“Yeah, I’ll try your handiwork. I trust Chowder’s made sure they’re not poisonous.”

“Ha, ha. Funny. I don’t need to poison pastries to off you; you’ll strangle yourself with a sheet before I even get to it.” Nurse made a face, but there was laughter in his eyes as Dex walked toward the kitchen, smiling to himself. When he walked through the kitchen door, the only other people in the room were Bitty and Jack, who were standing three feet apart, Jack staring resolutely at a cupboard, and Bitty messing with a tray of assorted cookies. Dex said “’Sup,” gestured vaguely with his beer, and grabbed four of the crescents, careful not to crush them. He’d worked hard on that rolling, after all. The pastry dough had not been very forgiving.

As he walked out of the kitchen, beer and pastries in hand, a holler went up from the doorway, where Shitty had caught his first mistlefoe victims. Wagner looked up at the green ball, over at Shitty’s grin, and then at the face of the kid he’d walked in with, someone Dex recognized from his physics class last semester. Jay? Jess? Dex couldn’t remember their name, but he was pretty sure they’d done a really neat project on force in different kinds of spins in dance and martial arts for the end-of-semester poster session.

Dex hovered by the kitchen while the room cheered on the fight. The brief scuffle ended with Jess/Jay/maybe Jamie?, who couldn’t have been more than 5’6, flipping the NCAA goalie on his back. Dex figured the poster project must’ve been based on personal interest and experience. Physics kid pulled Wagner up off the floor, and the two of them laughed and shook hands. The attention shifted back to the party. By the time Dex made his way back to the drink table, Nursey had disappeared. That surprised him slightly, but the pastries had turned out pretty well, so Dex figured he could stand to eat all four himself.

Although he didn’t see Nurse again for another hour and a half, the party carried on, the eggnog and beer flowed, and the mistlefoe fights broke out with increasing frequency. At one point, some kid from the football team ended up in the doorway next to Lardo. Half the football team started yelling, but Lardo just looked the kid dead in the eye and raised a single eyebrow. The guy’s face flickered through uncertainty to sheer terror, and he held up his hands and shrank away from the door into the crowd. The entire hockey team cheered. A little while later, some lax bro made the mistake of pausing in the doorway. Despite his being alone under the mistlefoe, someone started yelling “Fight, fight, fight,” and lax bro found himself in a full-scale fistfight with Shitty. Somehow several other lax bros and hockey players got involved, and just when things were getting nasty, Jack and Farmer intervened, dragging the brawling athletes apart with a stern “Okay, that’s enough.” As the doorway cleared, Dex could see a strand of lights dangling down, and part of the draping of the red sheet had come loose, leaving the sheet drooping across half the doorway. The mistlefoe, remarkably, appeared untouched.

Bitty, who’d appeared next to him the moment Jack stepped in to break up the fight, sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, these boys. I know there’s a rivalry, but haven’t they got any Christmas spirit?” Dex chuckled. “Anyhow, those pastries you helped with were a hit, Dex! Well done!”

“Oh, good--yeah, they were pretty good--I mean, you made them, I just rolled.”

Bits laughed. “Oh don’t be silly, I just whipped up the filling and the dough; you did all the hard work, dear!” Dex shrugged and smiled at the floor, which earned another laugh and a swat on the shoulder. “Have you tried the eggnog yet? I think it turned out well, if I may say so myself. It’s my moomaw’s recipe. It’s only the second time I’ve made it; my mama hates eggnog, would you believe it? She and her sister nearly had a falling-out about it at the Christmas party one year! Coach had to intervene!”

Dex shook his head. “Nah, haven’t tried it yet. I was still working on this beer and then I ended up over here and I haven’t been able to get back over to the drinks table.”

“Well then here, you have this cup. I just poured it. I was gonna give it to Jack, but I can grab him another.” Dex accepted the cup, taking a sip. He raised his eyebrows at the sweetness; he’d seen the amount of rum Bitty had poured into the bowl, but he couldn’t taste the slightest hint of alcohol.

“Damn, this is dangerous, Bits. We’d better watch out. I’ve seen Shitty shove cups of this at at least eight people in the last half hour.” Bitty laughed, and excused himself to go find Jack. Dex took another sip of the eggnog, which really was very good, and got lost in the party again.

A few fights and one dramatic and nearly-disastrous performance of the Mean Girls Jingle Bell Rock routine later, Dex found himself in the corner near the drinks table again, empty eggnog cup in hand. The volleyball girl he’d been talking to had just spotted a friend and ran off to dance, so he was alone again. He looked at his empty cup and remembered the poinsettia beer waiting in Lardo’s room. As he made his way through the crowd to get upstairs, he passed no fewer than three couples making out. He shook his head, but smiled and said, “Hope their Christmas is going merrily” to no one in particular.

In Lardo’s room, he found the promised six-pack of seasonal beer. There was a sheet of red construction paper taped to the cardboard case that read “If ur not Lardo, Shitty, Nursey, or Dex, this is NOT 4 U. FUCK OFF.” That surprised him: Nursey could’ve kept the beer for himself, or shared with someone else, maybe Chowder. Maybe it was just because Nursey knows he likes spiced ales, and Chowder has no appreciation for beer at all. That was probably it. At any rate, the thoughtfulness made him smile.

As he headed back down the stairs, his eye caught on Nursey, standing near the drinks table again, this time in the middle of a group. He looked nice, his dark red sweater looking even warmer in the dim amber light. He shifted, laughing at something someone said, and the light caught his face, throwing a gold glow on his cheekbones and the top of his hair. Dex felt a warmth grow in the pit of his stomach. He stayed there for a minute, hovering on the second step, gazing absentminded at the gold and red, feeling as warm as the colors looked. He shook himself out of his thoughts. Probably all the eggnog, that stuff really was dangerous. He told himself he’d stick to beer for the rest of the night, and walked back into the crowd.

He heard a whistle, and looked over to see Jack and Bitty standing in the mistlefoe doorway, grinning sheepishly. “You know what you gotta do, brah!” came Shitty’s voice.

“I’m not gonna fight Bittle, Shits. I might crush him. You need him. Who else is gonna cook for your sorry asses?”

“Pardon my sorry ass, Jackyboy, I don’t make the rules!”

“Well, yeah, technically you did…”

“The fucking impudence, brah! The universe makes these rules. I’m just the mouthpiece. Fuckin’ deck him, Bits!”

Bitty glanced at Jack and giggled. At Shitty’s continued yells, he grinned and playfully punched Jack in the stomach. Jack made a show of looking betrayed, but quickly smiled and lightly punched Bitty’s shoulder. Bitty poked him in the arm several times, until Jack laughed lightly and backed away. Shitty jeered, and Dex turned toward the corner where he’d last seen Nursey.

When he finally got to the drinks table, he’d finished half the beer. As he walked up, Nursey looked over from his circle and grinned widely when he caught sight of Dex. “Dexy! Where ya been, bro? Haven’t seen you in ages!” His enthusiasm suggested he’d probably had more eggnog than Dex. Nursey slung his arm around Dex’s neck and messed up his hair, exclaiming, “Good to see you again!” Dex laughed despite himself.

“Nice to see you again too, Nurse. Been a long, uh, 90 minutes without your winning presence.”

“Aw, didja miss me, Dexy? You coulda just come found me. I was with Lards, mostly. We were talking—” His intonation didn’t sound like the end of a sentence, but Nursey cut himself off and moved away. His arm was still around Dex’s neck, but his body no longer pressed into Dex’s. Dex found himself missing the absence, and then wondering why he’d just thought that. Maybe he was just cold; he was in a button-down, and Nursey was wearing a giant sweater.

Nursey glanced around and seemed to notice the beer in Dex’s hand. “Oh, good, you found them. You like them?”

“Yeah, it’s actually pretty good, man.” Dex gestured vaguely with the bottle. “That’s, uh, that’s why I’m still drinking it.”

“Good.” Nursey’s face looked a little too eager, and Dex felt like he’d missed something, not for the first time that night. “Good, I was hoping you would. I mean, I knew you liked—so—I mean, we saw them and they looked fun so we grabbed them. And given all the eggnog, we figured we could share.” Nursey rushed through the end of his explanation, and then looked away and tried to take a drag from his cup, which turned out to be empty. Dex was silent, still confused. As he turned his head, the lights fell on Nursey again, glinting off the scraps of gold tinsel that had somehow ended up in his hair, and Dex felt the warmth in his stomach again, now expanding beneath his ribs.

He was saved from having to think of anything to say by a chorus of shouts from the direction of the fateful door. Ransom and Holster had somehow managed to end up stuck in the doorway together. The two boys immediately fell to the floor and started a wild wrestling match, much to the delight of Shitty, Lardo, who was on Shitty’s shoulders, and everyone else who could see the door. Eventually, Holster pinned Ransom, who held up his hands and laughed. Holster slapped the floor, punched Ransom on the arm, and then dropped a kiss to Ransom’s forehead. Shitty whooped and a couple volleyball players aww’d.

“Happy mistlebro, dude.”

“Bro!” Ransom smiled lovingly as Holster held out his hand to help him up.

The Haus was packed now, definitely more college students than was allowed by any fire codes, dancing and drinking and occasionally fighting, generally celebrating the season and the impending end of the semester. The comfortable buzzy warmth Dex had felt for the last hour started feeling less comfortable and more suffocating, his head spinning a little. He could feel pain creeping up behind his temples, and his brain started working a little too fast. With a wave and a mumbled explanation in Nursey’s direction, he headed through the crowd towards the porch.

The cold December air shocked him out of his claustrophobia, and he took a deep breath. He sat down on the steps, stretching out his arms behind him. The only other person outside was Whiskey, sitting on the top step and staring pensively into the dark. When he looked over at Dex, Dex tipped his head in recognition, and got a curt nod back. Dex appreciated Whiskey and his calm silence. Sometimes it was nice to recognize someone else’s presence, but not have to do anything about it. It got exhausting constantly being on guard, constantly trying to figure out the next step in the conversation, trying to get in the next chirp. It was like being on the ice, trying to track the puck and read both his team and the opposition, except there weren’t plays he was following, and he was all alone, without the help of his d-partner. As he sat there, letting his toes go numb, thinking about that feeling of being on guard, he realized it was actually almost always  _against _ his d-partner. He was really only that tightly wound with Nursey.  _ Well duh ,  _ he thought at first. He and Nursey had fought since they were tadpoles; of course he always need to have his guard up. But no, that wasn’t right. He and Nursey didn’t really fight that much anymore. They bickered constantly, sure, but the last real fight they’d had was…Dex couldn’t remember. Maybe that one in early October, about new student housing mandates? But no, that wasn’t even a real fight; he’d just wanted to push Nursey’s buttons. The more he thought about it, the less sure Dex became of the supposed antagonism between the two. He wondered how long ago that antagonism had ceased to exist.

The realization came to him suddenly, like a shock: he didn’t  _ want  _ it to exist. He didn’t want to fight with Nursey; he didn’t want to have to keep his guard up anymore. Rationally, this sounded obvious: it’s pretty normal to want to be able to relax around a teammate, your d-pair, your…huh. Dex paused when his brain supplied  _ your best friend .  _ That…huh. At any rate. That was normal. But this felt different, somehow. Like he didn’t just wish he could relax a little, he had this strong conviction that he  _ needed  _ to be more comfortable around Nursey. That there was something wrong, something in the way, or maybe something missing, but he didn’t know what it was, so he didn’t know how to fix it. Dex hated not being able to fix things.

He was startled out of his mental monologue by a particularly rowdy uproar from inside. He realized that he could no longer feel his fingers and nose. Whiskey had disappeared, and Dex wondered how long he’d been sitting outside. He stood up, flexed his fingers, and tried to mentally prepare himself to go back inside.

As he walked through the entry, he noticed the red sheet, now looking about as bedraggled as it was bedazzled, was now drooping to cover almost the entire doorway. Just as he reached the door, he heard Nursey’s voice, saying “Dex? Brah, you seen Dex?” Something about his voice sounded almost lost, and something in Dex tightened. He stepped through the doorway, opening his mouth to call out to Nursey, to reassure him, and smacked into a body, hidden by the sheet. He wrestled the sheet away and came face-to-face with Nurse.

“Ah man, sorry dude, we should probably move this sheet, couldn’t see you at all…you okay?”

Nursey looked at him with wide eyes. “Oh, hi Dex, there you are.” Nursey glanced up, and then back at Dex’s face, eyebrows drawn. Dex followed his eyes up to where the ridiculous mistlefoe was hanging, perfectly between them. He looked back at Nursey, suddenly understanding the cautious, unsure expression. A year ago, Dex would’ve loved nothing more than a free chance to deck Nursey, but now he wasn’t so sure. He was struck again by the feeling from outside, that ache to stop fighting, to just let his guard down for once. He looked back at Nursey, who was staring at him, even more confused, tense and waiting for Dex to do something. He stood there, not moving, not laughing it off with a “chill, dude,” just still, watching Dex watch him. The light from the icicles above the doorway fell on him, colder than the golden light in the corner, a sharp contrast to Nursey himself, all soft edges and floppy sweaters and big eyes, big eyes that were still staring at Dex.

Dex reached out his hand, and watched as Nursey’s shoulders tensed, almost imperceptibly. Almost before he knew what he was doing, Dex grabbed Nursey’s sweater and hauled him close. Dex felt time miss a beat, like a record skipping, and then their lips were touching. He raised his free hand to Nursey’s neck, and felt him tense, and then relax into the touch. They were kissing, and it was kind of like fighting, except also not really at all. Dex felt something deep inside him crack, and then crumble completely. The warm feeling from before was back, this time spreading from his ribs through his entire body. He was sure that if he looked, the points of contact at his lips and hands would be glowing.

They broke apart, and Nursey fell back a step. “D—you—I, um—oh.” Dex just stood silently and stared, at his soft edges and giant eyes, now full of confusion but also something bright, something hopeful. “Ok.”

There was a whoop and a holler, and Dex suddenly remembered they were in the middle of a party. He blinked at Nursey. “Do you wanna, um, go grab…a pastry? Or something?”

Nursey smiled, small but sure. “Yeah. Pastries. Pastries are chill.”

They turned and headed toward the kitchen. Dex felt a hand brush his, fingers barely interlaced. He took Nursey’s hand, half-covered by the sleeve of his stupid warm red sweater, and squeezed. Their eyes met, and Nursey’s smile grew, until Dex couldn’t help but smile too. Warmth emanated from their joined hands, up his arm and through his whole body. It wasn’t suffocating, though, or buzzy; it was just comfortable. For the first time that night, maybe for the first time in almost a year and a half, Dex felt his walls coming down.

***

Derek laid back on the shingles of the reading room, gazing at the stars, especially bright in the moonless sky. He sighed as he passed the joint to Shitty. Shitty glanced at him, gazed at the sky, nodded sagely and said, “I told you, brah. Mistlefoe is always a good idea.”

 


End file.
